19 September 2006

Longwood seniors urged at Convocation
to show “commitment and courage”

Longwood alumnus Maj. Gregory L. Bowman (center), an Army attorney, spoke at Convocation, during which John B. Adams Jr., rector of the Board of Visitors, and Longwood's president, Dr. Patricia Cormier, officially opened the new academic year.

A Longwood University alumnus who as an Army attorney helped rebuild Iraq’s legal system urged seniors at Convocation to display “commitment and courage” to change a world that is increasingly complex and dangerous.

“I am going to challenge you to use the last year of your undergraduate career to build yourself into the world citizen that can change it for the better,” Maj. Gregory L. Bowman said during the ceremony Sept. 14 in Jarman Auditorium. “The world expects from you three things: commitment, courage and change. The world expects you to use all of your knowledge to solve problems to make it better, to make it more peaceful, to make it more hopeful, to make it less dangerous.”

Bowman, a 1990 summa cum laude graduate who is a Keysville native, is a U.S. Army judge advocate (attorney) currently assigned as the deputy staff judge advocate at the United States Armor Center, at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He served in Iraq in 2003 as senior legal adviser to the Governorate Support Team, which he described as “the initial organization charged with beginning reconstruction after major combat operations ceased.”

During that time, he served as the first administrator/Amicus Curie to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, the first-ever Iraqi intermediate appeals court with universal jurisdiction. He also was appointed by Ambassador Paul Bremer as the only military member of the Judicial Review Committee of Iraq, charged with “de-Bathifying” and rebuilding the Iraqi judiciary, and served as the U.S. administrator for the emergency rebuilding of the infrastructure of Baghdad’s judicial system.

The Convocation ceremony ended with the longstanding Longwood tradition of “capping,” in which seniors had a customized, colorfully decorated mortarboard placed on their head by a friend.

In his Convocation address, Bowman credited Longwood with dispelling a “great myth,” for him, about knowledge. “No one gets paid, no one gets fame, no one gets glory for ‘what’ they know. In spite of the cliché, knowledge alone is not power. The world today is full of books, databases and documents that store countless volumes of knowledge. Anyone with a computer and the correct access can obtain knowledge. No one cares if you can memorize facts and formulas. No, the world needs individuals who can apply that knowledge, who can use known facts, figures and data to develop something new, to forge new ground, to solve key problems.”

Bowman noted the stunning technological changes that have taken place since he graduated from Longwood. “Sixteen years ago I had never heard of a Pentium processor, an iPod or an e-mail. I had a 286 processor in my computer, a 100 megabyte hard-drive, a black and white monitor and a dot-matrix printer. Back then floppy disks were actually floppy, about five inches wide, and could hold about one-one hundredth of your average thumb-drive today. And, these were state of the art. I had never played a compact disc, had no idea what a DVD player was and spent $400 on my first VCR. Cell phones came in large leather bags, were actually installed in your vehicle and required a large antenna.”

The world, he said, was “extraordinarily different when I sat in Convocation here at Longwood. It seemed larger, more hopeful and much less dangerous. Today, the world is much smaller – computers make communications and entertainment virtually instantaneous. I remember vividly standing on a street in Baghdad with a cell phone calling the Pentagon regarding a case. Today, you may contact anyone in the world in a matter of seconds, send incredibly large amounts of data in an instant, and, more importantly, spread ideas – whether good or bad, whether benign or dangerous – to the world with just a click of the mouse. Today, the world seems less hopeful as religious intolerance and hatred seems to permeate the globe. Today, the world seems more dangerous as terrorism, nuclear proliferation by rogue states and the development of fanatical international groups steadily grows. Yes, my world was nothing like yours.”

Bowman earned a B.S. in sociology at Longwood, where he was a member of Phi Kappa Phi national honor society and Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. He has a law degree from the University of Virginia and two master’s degrees from Army schools. Every year he and his mother, Betty P. Bowman of Keysville, contribute a matching donation to Longwood in memory of his father, James G. Bowman, to support the Outstanding Sociology/Anthropology Graduate Award, which he received in 1990.

Bowman was recognized as the American Bar Association’s Outstanding Young Military Attorney (Army) for 1999-2000. In previous assignments, he has served at the Pentagon, at Fort Monroe, Fort Lee and Fort Bragg, and in Germany.

The Convocation ceremony ended with the longstanding Longwood tradition of “capping,” in which seniors had a customized, colorfully decorated mortarboard placed on their head by a friend. In keeping with the custom, the first to be capped was the senior class president, Tonia Smith, which was performed by the vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Wayne McWee, assisted by Tonia’s chosen friend and fellow senior Kathleen Shaw.